AssAsInAssassin:Straelbora: Spartacus Outlaw: Why do Americans insist on pronouncing "u" as "oo"? Surely Vlad doesn't pronounce his last name "Pootin".

How do you think it's pronounced? "Pyootin?" The core of his last name is путь, transliterated as " put' ," meaning "path" in Russian. The last name Путин is pronounce "Poot (with a softening of the 'T")-een."

Thank you. I decided it was too much trouble to do the research you thankfully did. My Russian classes are decades behind me, but from what I remember, "Poo-teen" is probably correct.

Straelbora:Spartacus Outlaw: Why do Americans insist on pronouncing "u" as "oo"? Surely Vlad doesn't pronounce his last name "Pootin".

How do you think it's pronounced? "Pyootin?" The core of his last name is путь, transliterated as " put' ," meaning "path" in Russian. The last name Путин is pronounce "Poot (with a softening of the 'T")-een."

Spartacus Outlaw:Why do Americans insist on pronouncing "u" as "oo"? Surely Vlad doesn't pronounce his last name "Pootin".

How do you think it's pronounced? "Pyootin?" The core of his last name is путь, transliterated as " put' ," meaning "path" in Russian. The last name Путин is pronounce "Poot (with a softening of the 'T")-een."

Oh, Russia, you big silly! When will you ever learn that foreigners are an inexpensive, plentiful, and inexaustible source of cheap labour and economic growth, not to mention daytime sobriety?

Like Canadians in Georgia, you can be sure that anybody who isn't drunk and fishing for catfish by Noon on any day when the Sun shines is a foreigner, taking away full time fishermen's part-time rainy day jobs. Or whatever the Russian equivalent of getting drunk and fishing is. I suspect it is getting drunk and then getting even more drunk until somebody gets hurt or falls down in a drunken stupor for the rest of the day, week, or whatever.

But any way, Russia will never come out of the Middle Ages until its dictators and appartchiks can trust foreigners to get on with the job while Russians drink themselves stupid.

You should have learned that from XVIIIth century France or XIXth century Prussia by now.

Not to mention the XXIst century Chinese who are taking over Siberia from sheer need to keep their scrawny asses from freezing off.